Known prior art switchable finger levers (s. DE 103 10 968 A1) have a too solid construction and are too large in longitudinal and in transverse direction, they also have a too complicated structure for mass production, are too complex to assemble and, due to the arrangement of important components such as the restoring spring means on their valve side, they possess an excessively high mass moment of inertia.
Besides this, the prior art finger lever of the aforesaid document has a coupling mechanism with a too complicated design necessitating relatively high actuation forces. Because of the lateral outward displacement of the coupling slides which act independently of each other, there exists the danger, at least in case of uncoupling, that during the given base circle interval, only one of the coupling slides is adequately retracted, so that an unnecessary wear or a destruction of components is likely to occur.